With the popularization of diverse Internet Protocol Television (Internet Protocol Television, IPTV) services, the data traffic protection switching mechanism of the backbone network has been mature. However, in case that a link of an edge router on the user-side fails, no effective data traffic protection mechanism of multicast services is available currently.
Data traffic protection schemes for multicast services have been put forward in the prior art, for example, multicast source active/standby protection. In the multicast source active/standby protection scheme, a multicast proxy server is connected to a multicast-source active server and a multicast-source standby server respectively. The multicast proxy server internally provides a collaboration interface for the multicast-source active server and the multicast-source standby server, and externally converts source address of data stream of the multicast source into the same external network address and forwards the data stream of the multicast source. A multicast source backup switching control protocol is run between the multicast proxy server and the multicast-source active server/multicast-source standby server to implement active/standby protection for the multicast source. Such a multicast-source active/standby protection scheme mainly aims at overcoming instability of the multicast source in the related art, but is difficult to be applied to a receiving end on the user-side.
A multicast static group backup scheme is also put forward in the related art. In this scheme, multicast static group information is configured in the interface of an active router on the network side, and a hot channel is introduced into the active router, and is backed up manually on a standby router. Because such a scheme requires manual configuration, it is impossible to dynamically back up multicast program information demanded by a user. Furthermore, because no user information is backed up in the standby router, it is impossible to identify or authenticate the user, it is difficult to protect benefits of an operator.
It can be seen that the data traffic protection schemes in the prior art cannot be simply applied to user-side data traffic protection due to their own disadvantages. In the case of absence of protection, in case that the user-side multicast active router fails, multicast traffic is interrupted. The user cannot again join a channel corresponding to the multicast traffic by sending a report packet until the next Internet Group Management Protocol (Internet Group Management Protocol, IGMP) query is initiated, thereby deteriorating the Quality of Experience of the user.